Okay, a little bit more. Depending on feedback the first bits might actually go up elsewhere sometime this evening, who knows. ~ The Mgt.
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After noticing the face-tree, I took a closer look at my surroundings. This forest isn’t that different from Earth-normal. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot closer than other forests I’ve been in. And the whole place is thick with psionic power. The air’s almost greasywith it.
The Builders had this place marked down as a sanctuary.
I wonder if I’m not alone here?
The face-tree might’ve been pareidolia or Builders fucking around, but now I have photographic proof. People live here!
Where did I get photographic proof, you ask? I got it from the survey array. The ansible’s dead and my subspace radio isn’t working yet, but the old-school radio transmitter still works. Always have a backup, even if that backup is useless beyond three light-years. The survey array is a cluster of microsats Victory uses to do a comprehensive mapping of any inhabitable planets we come across. Drop them off at the beginning of the survey, let them orbit for a couple weeks then pick ‘em up just before departure. Nice and simple. I’d just managed to drop them off before everything went weird.
Earlier today the array finally came back into radio range, and it wanted to talk. Bereft of any better conversation (tree-face outside is sympathetic but a better listener than a talker) I initiated the download and started looking at my new home. I was expectingto see forests, plains, deserts, marshlands… you know, the sort of thing you normally find on a garden planet. Maybe some Builder ruins, those can be hard to spot but I’ve got plenty of experience looking.
I sure as hell wasn’t expecting farms, villages and even I-shit-you-not castles all over the damn place! It looks like the continent I landed on and the one directly to the east are pretty heavily settled. Nothing obviously industrial (dammit, would’ve solved a lot of problems) but pretty well-refined High Postclassical by the looks of things. The resolution isn't good enough to pick out individuals, so I still have no idea what the locals look like. But they’re there. And odds are good somebody noticed me.
Going to have to think about this a little.
Thinking about it still. So, there’s inhabitants. Awesome. Now I at least have some company during my exile. Assuming I ever get close to them, that is.
It’s the old Prime Directive dilemma, that thorny philosophical issue every Starfleet cadet be they Ranger or Fleet scrub gets to chew on in the academy. Standard policy is we don’t contact aliens who haven’t at least spotted us and figured out a way to contact us. The idea, so far as my instructors explained it, was that the level of knowledge necessary had to be enough that the aliens wouldn’t lose their shit entirely at the prospect of not being alone in the universe and all that good shit. And sure, that makes sense. Stay away from the guys armed with sticks, no problem.
(Used to be there was a purist faction that said we shouldn’t do anything to “disrupt the natural evolution of a species,” even if that meant sitting back and watching them all croak from a rogue asteroid. Thankfully smarter heads prevailed over that sort of ludicrous decision-making process. Some people, man, I swear. Anyway.)
Now, the thing here is I don’t have the luxury of sitting in high orbit watching the preindustrial mortals scurry about their daily lives. I have to assume that somebody saw my descent, or they saw the epic track Victorycut through the forest, and they’re going to follow it right to me. So I have choices to make. The repulsors are working well enough that I can raise ship and I’ve got one-twelfth impulse power, not very fast but fast enough to outpace searchers. I was going to move the ship anyway, get out of this fucking ditch at least and put her on the landing legs, but do I move away from the crash site or do I stay nearby?
Do I want to be found?
Victory’s still mostly intact, the subspace radio’s a work in progress. I move off, I leave behind an inexplicable hole in the ground. I stay and I have to tell the truth or I work out a story. Maybe some balance between the two, try to recontextualize my experience with what a bunch of low-tech people would know. I wish Mama or Vivi were here, this sort of mythologizing is right up their alley.
You know what, fuck it. I want to be found. I may well be stuck here for the rest of my natural life, and I flat out fucking refuse to be a hermit if I don’t have to be.
First, though, some howling. I need to howl.
All the repairs I can make to the repulsors are done. So, time to see if she’ll lift out of the hole. I’ve scouted a clearing not too far from the edge of the forest to put her down in, right alongside the giant skidmark we made on the way in. Might as well make it easy.
More once I know one way or the other if she’s going to move.
Well, good news is the repulsors worked like a charm. Fired them up and Victorylifted out of the trench and floated up over the trees. Bad news is the impulse engines are in worse shape than I thought. Must’ve been feedback from the FTL that damaged the focusing coils. I’ve got maybe 2% impulse power tops before I risk burning out the engines completely. Call it a top speed of… five, six hundred kilometers an hour. Getting anywhere distant is going to be a chore, and orbit is right out without repairing the coils.
Always something. Going to go howl for a bit, then crack a tube rat and celebrate not sleeping at a weird angle for the first time this week. Rangers know how to party.
Finished the hull inspection now that I can see the whole thing. Plating’s pretty badly chewed up along the bow, just like I expected. Some of it’s patchable, but there’s a few hull panels that took damage I don’t have the autofac volume necessary to repair. I figure I can cut up what’s left of those panels and feed them to the disassembler, then use the extra hullmetal to shore up the patches. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.
Spent some time going over the survey pictures, looking for something approximating a steel mill. All I need is a dozen square meters of rolled steel sheet to cover the damage until I can get Victory back to a drydock. I’d accept the same in plate steel, pig iron or even bronze if it was available—it’s not great, but at least it’d provide some protection to the inner hull. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like the locals have that kind of industry set up yet.
On that not-entirely-encouraging note, I’m putting off hull repairs for the moment. I’m a Starfleet Ranger, a professional space explorer. I ought to be out there in the big wide world exploring things! Seeing the sights, taking a recce, noting important landmarks and all that stuff. More importantly, I think it’s time I had something other than a tube rat for dinner for the first time in a year and a half.
Hunting time!
So yeah, that happened. Let me tell you about my hunting trip…
I grabbed a couple guns and ATV 1 and headed off into the woods to bag me a bandersnatch. Mmm, roast bandersnatch. I drove out five or six kilometers from the ship before ditching the ATV and heading further in on foot. Dirt buggies are handy for driving around but they’re noisy and even assuming the local wildlife’s never seen anything like them they’d still be wary of the big noisy thing running around the forest.
The forest was pretty nice, actually. Old-growth, lots of really old trees. This wasn’t a place that had been logged or otherwise touched by the inhabitants in a long time, if ever. If I closed my eyes I could almost be back near my grandparents’ place.
A couple hours of tracking later and I saw what this planet had to offer in terms of animals. They were deer. I don’t even know what the hell is up with that, but okay. Deer aren’t the sort of thing I expect to find hundreds of light years away from Earth, but there’s one thing I know about deer: they’re damned tasty.
Deer being deer, they hadn’t noticed my creeping up on them, which worked out quite nicely. Then things got interesting, because while I was focused on my dream of barbequed venison somebody else was creeping up from the other side. I’d aimed at one of the smaller does when all of a sudden the biggest goddamned wolf I’ve ever seen in my life burst out of the undergrowth and pounced. The deer scattered, I said something along the lines of “motherfucker!” and went for a kill shot on the nearest one. I got lucky and managed to drop it, while my competition hadn’t managed to down her dance partner, this impressive buck that managed to run off with a few claw marks on his flanks.
Guns 1, tooth & claw 0.
When I got to my prize the wolf had padded over and was sniffing the carcass. She probably didn’t know what to make of the lack of arrows, or the smell of the cordite. I grabbed the deer and signaled the ATV to come get me. The wolf gave me this weird look, and I noticed that not only was the wolf huge, like horse-sized, she was pregnant. Which explained why she’d taken the jump and her lack of success, I guess. She just kept looking at me until I sort of lost patience.
“Look, lady,” I said. “This is my kill. If you want you can come back to the ship with me and you can have some, but don’t try taking it off me. Clear?” I felt like a huge idiot talking to a giant canid like that, especially one that could cause some serious chassis damage without thinking about it. But—and this is definitely something I’m going to have to research further—she just looked at me and sat down like she’d been domesticated. She sat like that until the ATV arrived, was a little wary of the engine noise but plodded along after me all the way back to the ship.
And that’s how I made a new friend. She’s snacking on some organs while I wait for the steak to finish cooking. I think I’ll call her Moro. Moro the giant fucking wolf who lives in a forest with face-trees and deer that could’ve come from Earth.
This place is just fucking weird.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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Log Entry: Surface Day 2.1
After noticing the face-tree, I took a closer look at my surroundings. This forest isn’t that different from Earth-normal. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot closer than other forests I’ve been in. And the whole place is thick with psionic power. The air’s almost greasywith it.
The Builders had this place marked down as a sanctuary.
I wonder if I’m not alone here?
Log Entry: Surface Day 3
The face-tree might’ve been pareidolia or Builders fucking around, but now I have photographic proof. People live here!
Where did I get photographic proof, you ask? I got it from the survey array. The ansible’s dead and my subspace radio isn’t working yet, but the old-school radio transmitter still works. Always have a backup, even if that backup is useless beyond three light-years. The survey array is a cluster of microsats Victory uses to do a comprehensive mapping of any inhabitable planets we come across. Drop them off at the beginning of the survey, let them orbit for a couple weeks then pick ‘em up just before departure. Nice and simple. I’d just managed to drop them off before everything went weird.
Earlier today the array finally came back into radio range, and it wanted to talk. Bereft of any better conversation (tree-face outside is sympathetic but a better listener than a talker) I initiated the download and started looking at my new home. I was expectingto see forests, plains, deserts, marshlands… you know, the sort of thing you normally find on a garden planet. Maybe some Builder ruins, those can be hard to spot but I’ve got plenty of experience looking.
I sure as hell wasn’t expecting farms, villages and even I-shit-you-not castles all over the damn place! It looks like the continent I landed on and the one directly to the east are pretty heavily settled. Nothing obviously industrial (dammit, would’ve solved a lot of problems) but pretty well-refined High Postclassical by the looks of things. The resolution isn't good enough to pick out individuals, so I still have no idea what the locals look like. But they’re there. And odds are good somebody noticed me.
Going to have to think about this a little.
Log Entry: Surface Day 3.1
Thinking about it still. So, there’s inhabitants. Awesome. Now I at least have some company during my exile. Assuming I ever get close to them, that is.
It’s the old Prime Directive dilemma, that thorny philosophical issue every Starfleet cadet be they Ranger or Fleet scrub gets to chew on in the academy. Standard policy is we don’t contact aliens who haven’t at least spotted us and figured out a way to contact us. The idea, so far as my instructors explained it, was that the level of knowledge necessary had to be enough that the aliens wouldn’t lose their shit entirely at the prospect of not being alone in the universe and all that good shit. And sure, that makes sense. Stay away from the guys armed with sticks, no problem.
(Used to be there was a purist faction that said we shouldn’t do anything to “disrupt the natural evolution of a species,” even if that meant sitting back and watching them all croak from a rogue asteroid. Thankfully smarter heads prevailed over that sort of ludicrous decision-making process. Some people, man, I swear. Anyway.)
Now, the thing here is I don’t have the luxury of sitting in high orbit watching the preindustrial mortals scurry about their daily lives. I have to assume that somebody saw my descent, or they saw the epic track Victorycut through the forest, and they’re going to follow it right to me. So I have choices to make. The repulsors are working well enough that I can raise ship and I’ve got one-twelfth impulse power, not very fast but fast enough to outpace searchers. I was going to move the ship anyway, get out of this fucking ditch at least and put her on the landing legs, but do I move away from the crash site or do I stay nearby?
Do I want to be found?
Victory’s still mostly intact, the subspace radio’s a work in progress. I move off, I leave behind an inexplicable hole in the ground. I stay and I have to tell the truth or I work out a story. Maybe some balance between the two, try to recontextualize my experience with what a bunch of low-tech people would know. I wish Mama or Vivi were here, this sort of mythologizing is right up their alley.
You know what, fuck it. I want to be found. I may well be stuck here for the rest of my natural life, and I flat out fucking refuse to be a hermit if I don’t have to be.
First, though, some howling. I need to howl.
Log Entry: Surface Day 4
All the repairs I can make to the repulsors are done. So, time to see if she’ll lift out of the hole. I’ve scouted a clearing not too far from the edge of the forest to put her down in, right alongside the giant skidmark we made on the way in. Might as well make it easy.
More once I know one way or the other if she’s going to move.
Log Entry: Surface Day 4.1
Well, good news is the repulsors worked like a charm. Fired them up and Victorylifted out of the trench and floated up over the trees. Bad news is the impulse engines are in worse shape than I thought. Must’ve been feedback from the FTL that damaged the focusing coils. I’ve got maybe 2% impulse power tops before I risk burning out the engines completely. Call it a top speed of… five, six hundred kilometers an hour. Getting anywhere distant is going to be a chore, and orbit is right out without repairing the coils.
Always something. Going to go howl for a bit, then crack a tube rat and celebrate not sleeping at a weird angle for the first time this week. Rangers know how to party.
Log Entry: Surface Day 5
Finished the hull inspection now that I can see the whole thing. Plating’s pretty badly chewed up along the bow, just like I expected. Some of it’s patchable, but there’s a few hull panels that took damage I don’t have the autofac volume necessary to repair. I figure I can cut up what’s left of those panels and feed them to the disassembler, then use the extra hullmetal to shore up the patches. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.
Spent some time going over the survey pictures, looking for something approximating a steel mill. All I need is a dozen square meters of rolled steel sheet to cover the damage until I can get Victory back to a drydock. I’d accept the same in plate steel, pig iron or even bronze if it was available—it’s not great, but at least it’d provide some protection to the inner hull. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like the locals have that kind of industry set up yet.
On that not-entirely-encouraging note, I’m putting off hull repairs for the moment. I’m a Starfleet Ranger, a professional space explorer. I ought to be out there in the big wide world exploring things! Seeing the sights, taking a recce, noting important landmarks and all that stuff. More importantly, I think it’s time I had something other than a tube rat for dinner for the first time in a year and a half.
Hunting time!
Log Entry: Surface Day 5.1
So yeah, that happened. Let me tell you about my hunting trip…
I grabbed a couple guns and ATV 1 and headed off into the woods to bag me a bandersnatch. Mmm, roast bandersnatch. I drove out five or six kilometers from the ship before ditching the ATV and heading further in on foot. Dirt buggies are handy for driving around but they’re noisy and even assuming the local wildlife’s never seen anything like them they’d still be wary of the big noisy thing running around the forest.
The forest was pretty nice, actually. Old-growth, lots of really old trees. This wasn’t a place that had been logged or otherwise touched by the inhabitants in a long time, if ever. If I closed my eyes I could almost be back near my grandparents’ place.
A couple hours of tracking later and I saw what this planet had to offer in terms of animals. They were deer. I don’t even know what the hell is up with that, but okay. Deer aren’t the sort of thing I expect to find hundreds of light years away from Earth, but there’s one thing I know about deer: they’re damned tasty.
Deer being deer, they hadn’t noticed my creeping up on them, which worked out quite nicely. Then things got interesting, because while I was focused on my dream of barbequed venison somebody else was creeping up from the other side. I’d aimed at one of the smaller does when all of a sudden the biggest goddamned wolf I’ve ever seen in my life burst out of the undergrowth and pounced. The deer scattered, I said something along the lines of “motherfucker!” and went for a kill shot on the nearest one. I got lucky and managed to drop it, while my competition hadn’t managed to down her dance partner, this impressive buck that managed to run off with a few claw marks on his flanks.
Guns 1, tooth & claw 0.
When I got to my prize the wolf had padded over and was sniffing the carcass. She probably didn’t know what to make of the lack of arrows, or the smell of the cordite. I grabbed the deer and signaled the ATV to come get me. The wolf gave me this weird look, and I noticed that not only was the wolf huge, like horse-sized, she was pregnant. Which explained why she’d taken the jump and her lack of success, I guess. She just kept looking at me until I sort of lost patience.
“Look, lady,” I said. “This is my kill. If you want you can come back to the ship with me and you can have some, but don’t try taking it off me. Clear?” I felt like a huge idiot talking to a giant canid like that, especially one that could cause some serious chassis damage without thinking about it. But—and this is definitely something I’m going to have to research further—she just looked at me and sat down like she’d been domesticated. She sat like that until the ATV arrived, was a little wary of the engine noise but plodded along after me all the way back to the ship.
And that’s how I made a new friend. She’s snacking on some organs while I wait for the steak to finish cooking. I think I’ll call her Moro. Moro the giant fucking wolf who lives in a forest with face-trees and deer that could’ve come from Earth.
This place is just fucking weird.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"